Highway through the icefields

by hayley on 29 June 2011

Jasper was next on the destination agenda. From Lake Louise it is about 230km north via the Icefields Parkway, a highway through the Banff and Jasper national parks. To extract maximum value I booked another bus tour to get me there.

Being a tour there were several stops along the way and being eager tourists we filed off the bus each time to photograph the awesomeness. Crowfoot Mountain was one such stop.

Peyto Lake with its luxurious milky looking waters was another.

The lake viewing platform was down a sloping path which ice had made quite treacherous.

The main stop of the day was on the Columbia Icefields to see the Athabasca Glacier. Unfortunately as with many/most glaciers in the world today, this one is receding at an alarming rate so I’m glad I saw it when I had the opportunity. This is the view from the visitor centre. You can see from the moraine that the retreating glacier has left behind that it used to be substantially bigger.

From here we boarded a bus and travelled a short distance before transferring to purpose built vehicles that would take us onto the glacier. There we could walk around, albeit in a carefully marked off area.

It looks nice and peaceful… though in the other direction, and with this happening several times each day, it is easy to see why this is the most visited glacier in North America.

We got to Jasper early evening and I began my next hostelling adventure… a shared 30 bed dorm!

Hi…

I'm Hayley and I live in the beautiful city of Wellington NZ. Outside of my work as an IT programme manager I love to travel and exercise my creativity. This blog is a photo journal of my travel experiences, the big stuff and the small. Thanks for visiting!